Freedoms and Solidarities: In Pursuit of Human Rights

(Paperback)

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Much has been written about growing global disparities in wealth and resources, how global capitalism has adversely affected human populations and the environment, and the dangers that a unipolar world order poses to peace and global pluralism. After summarizing the evidence for these arguments, the authors develop two main themes: first, that there is a growing transformative peoples' movement that challenges global capitalism and the imperial superpower; and, second, there is an extraordinary worldwide shift underway in human consciousness that accompanies practical global interdependencies and connectedness. The authors provide evidence for an emerging foundation of what philosopher Peter Singer describes as a 'one-world ethic,' and they show how this ethic is closely connected with what is called the 'human rights revolution.' They compare the western, liberal conception of freedom with conceptions of freedom found in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Amartya Sen, and draw from Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition to clarify that freedom has both collective and individual dimensions. They build on these foundations to address the following topics: positive human rights, collective goods, cosmopolitanism, social and cultural pluralism, and they pose alternatives to capitalism and liberal democracy. The authors work in the tradition of critical social science, but go beyond that to encourage readers to engage in emancipatory projects and utopian thinking. The worlds' peoples face too many terrifying prospects not to engage such projects and thinking.

Author Bio

Judith Blau is professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and president of the US chapter of Sociologists without Borders. She is the author of Architects and Firms, The Shape of Culture, Social Contracts and Economic Markets, and Race in the Schools, editor of The Blackwell Companion to Sociology, and co-editor, with Keri Iyall Smith, of The Public Sociologies Reader. She has published over 75 articles in scholarly journals, and was the president of the Southern Sociological Society. Alberto Moncada is president of Sociologists without Borders/Soci-logos Sin Fronteras and Vice-President of UNESCO-Valencia He has degrees in law, sociology and education, and is the author of over 30 books in Spanish, including three on Hispanics in the U. S. He is frequently interviewed by the Spanish media.